


Hitting a Wall

by nerdiekatie



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Relationships, Self-Harm, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 08:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10302974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdiekatie/pseuds/nerdiekatie
Summary: Pidge carefully sets her laptop aside, stands up, and sprints at the corner of her room.





	

**Author's Note:**

> please be aware of your own headspace before you read

Pidge is fine. The days are starting to blur together, but Pidge is fine. Pidge has skipped dinner for a week, but she’s fine, she just needs to decrypt this intel. Pidge hasn’t showered in four days, but she will once she gets this done, and she will get this done, once her fingers stop shaking, and her eyes can focus, and she stops feeling like there’s peppermint in her chest. Pidge ignores the way her thoughts circle, faster and tighter. She’s been at this for months. She feels like she’s never going to get it done, and she needs the information to find her family, and she needs a break, but she can’t take one. She’s so angry, she wants to throw her laptop, to smash her projects, but she can’t, they’re too important, she would lose valuable data.

Pidge carefully sets her laptop aside, stands up, and sprints at the corner of her room.

She thuds into the wall, skidding back a step. She backs up, and takes another run. And another. And another and another. She yelling, and it echoes just a little against the metal wall. It feels anticlimactic, the way there’s so much inside her- her thoughts keep going, and her body keeps slamming, and her throat keeps tearing- but from a vantage point just outside of her and few feet to the left, she can see she is just a small girl screaming and running into walls. She keeps going until her door chimes, and an arm is snagging her mid run. She knows it’s Shiro. No one else has a metal arm, but no one else but Shiro and Hunk would be able to hold her down this long. Keith could, but only if he sat on her, but not like this, held firmly against a broad chest, restrained without being crushed. She wishes it was Keith. She wants to be crushed.

“Put me down,” she tries to scream, but her voice is gone. The arm doesn’t. It turns and set her down on her bed, gently, more gently than she wants.

“Pidge?” he asks. Pidge says something horrible, and derogatory, something she’d regret later, but still no sound left her lips. Pidge can taste copper at the back of her throat.

“I’m going to get you some water, okay? Stay there, please.” He leaves. The sink is close, close enough the he could stop her from leaving if she ran for it, but Pidge doesn’t want to stay. She wants to leave, and the wanting sinks into her skin so badly that she scratches bloody streaks into it. Shiro leaves the sink when the notices her frenzied movements. He covers her hands with his, stilling them. “Please don’t do that.” He doesn’t state that obvious, that she’s hurting herself doing it, because he knows that she wants to. “Here,” he says, handing her a piece of paper, “Rip that up if you need to, but please don’t hurt yourself.” Pidge glares at him, but accepts the paper, ripping it viciously into tiny shreds. Shiro’s back with a glass of water by the time she rips the paper into eighths. She takes the offered glass, taking a quick sip to wet the copper she can taste of the back of her throat. She puts it down to continue her assault on the paper. When the paper’s too small to rip satisfactorily, her frustration must show on her face because Shiro hands her a new sheet, and takes the bits of the old.

“Pidge,” Shiro says to catch her attention. She keeps ripping at the paper. “I’d like to take a look at you, but I need you to take off your sweatshirt.  I need to know if you’re wearing anything under your sweatshirt. A tank top?” Pidge nods jerkily, intent on her paper. This one is ruined so she swipes a new sheet for herself, dumping paper flakes on her desk. “Great. Now I need to know if you can take off your sweatshirt, or if it’s okay for me to do it?” Pidge shrugs off her sweatshirt, throwing it on the floor. Shiro picks it up, folds it, and places it on her bed next to her.

“Pidge, I’m going to touch your arms now.” Pidge feels Shiro poke gently around her arms and torso. Her ripping is interfering with his exam a little, and she’s grateful he doesn’t ask her to stop. She hisses through her teeth when a presses on a place that tender. When he’s done poking her, he moves her arms and twists her torso to check her range of motion. By the time he’s done, Pidge has stopped ripping her paper and instead is folding it repetitively. She no longer feels like a maelstrom, but her vision is still soft and unfocused, and her head is fuzzy and swimming, drifting on a gentle tide. Shiro stops and takes a close look at her.

“Okay, Pidge. If you’re feeling dizzy, I want you to cup your hands over your face, like this,” he demonstrates, cupping his hands so that they cover his mouth and nose, “and breathe.” His voice is muffled by his hands, as is the long, deep breath he takes. Pidge isn’t inclined to move. Sitting and staring at nothing, fiddling sluggishly with the paper in her hands feels like a perfectly valid life choice. Shiro takes her hands and cups them for her, moving them toward her face, stopping short of just putting them on her face. She takes them the last few inches, but sits and doesn’t breathe. Breathing would take concentrated effort right now, and she just doesn’t have that.

“Okay, Pidge, I’m going to count, and I’d like you to breathe with me, okay?” Pidge looks at him blankly. “Okay, Pidge, we’re going to breathe in for four counts and out for three, okay?” He starts. “In, two three four, out, two three, in two three four, out two three.” Pidge copies, inhaling and exhaling as Shiro does. 

“That’s good, Pidge. Is there a first aid kit in here?” Pidge nods heavily, continuing the breathing exercise. Her glasses start to fog over. “Does it have the bruise cream that Coran gave us in there?” Pidge nods again, breathing. “Okay, “ says Shiro. “I’m going to continue counting while I go get the cream.” He stands up, and disappears into the bathroom while he continues to intone, “In, two three four, out two three, and in two three four, out two three.”

He comes back with the cream and some water. When he comes back, he says, “I’m going to put this on, okay? You look like you’re going to have some pretty deep bruising, but this should help.” Pidge nods, focusing on _out two three_. The cream is cold when Shiro puts it on, but it does soothe some of the ache. Pidge might jump in another situation, but as it is, she only has the energy to half-heartedly move away. The movement is so small, she’s not even sure Shiro notices. Shiro screws on the lid of the cream.

“Okay, Pidge, you’re doing great. We’re going to try holding our breath, now. We’re breathing in for four, holding for three, and breathing out for three. Ready?” he asks, and begins his new count. “In, two three four, hold two three, out two three. In, two three four, hold two three, out two three. Good job, Pidge.” They stay like that, Shiro kneeling in front of her, counting out her breaths for her, for how long, Pidge isn’t sure. Eventually, Shiro lets his counts fall off, and Pidge keeps going on her own. Later still, Pidge lets her hands fall.

Shiro smiles. “Better now?”

Pidge opens her mouth, then closes it, remembering that she can’t speak. She grabs a piece of paper, and a pencil and writes “Better.” Her tongue still feels heavy, but her head is still. It’s nice. Her hands feel heavy. Her movements are jerky as she forces her hands into delayed motion, like a low quality robot that starts and stops at each command.

“Good,” says Shiro. “What happened, Pidge?”

Pidge shrugs. _I was angry,_ she writes. If Shiro knows that’s a gross oversimplication, he doesn’t comment on it. It’s the best Pidge can do to describe why she threw herself into her wall. Writing it down in just three words makes her feel a little ashamed, especially since Shiro had to come and take care of her.

“Well,” Shiro says, “The next time you feel like, I want you to come find one of the other paladins, okay? We’ll work it out. Caring for your team is what being a team is about.”

Pidge nods. “Okay,” she mouths.  

“Why don’t you lie down until dinner?” Shiro suggests. Pidge signals her agreement. “I’ll get the lights on my way out.” He pats her on the top of her head, where she is unbruised. Pidge falls back against her bed, weary. Shiro hits the light and stands in the door for a second before leaving.

“We’re here for you, Pidge.”

**Author's Note:**

> the castleship has paper and pencils now because i said so


End file.
